Once moderate, New Jersey's House Republicans embrace the Ryan budget

EPA/JIM LO SCALZORepublican Congressman from Wisconsin Paul Ryan speaks about his budget plan shortly after it passed the House.

New Jersey’s House Republicans — typically a moderate bunch — has veered sharply to the right to support Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan. An election year adjustment, or is this the new Republican normal?

House Republicans passed Ryan’s budget plan on Thursday, entrenching themselves as the Party of the One Percent.

The budget plan, which Ryan claims is all about reducing the deficit, does anything but. In what seems to be the Republican Party’s core value, Ryan’s proposal provides billions in tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting social safety net programs, putting the middle and lower classes at even greater risk than they are today.

Ryan claims he’ll balance those tax cuts by closing tax loopholes he doesn’t name. Thats’ a cop-out of historic dimensions, from a man who presents himself as a courageous truth-teller.

Thursday’s party line vote also demonstrated that New Jersey’s historically moderate Republican delegation has, regrettably, gone all in with the radicals who have taken control of their party. The delegation — Rodney Frelinghuysen, Scott Garrett, Leonard Lance, Frank LoBiondo, Jon Runyan and Chris Smith — all voted for it.

Garrett is a hard-core right-winger who voted against aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina, so that’s no surprise. But now it appears the others are falling into line.

During his years in Trenton, Lance was a sensible moderate — a pro-environment guy who once voted in favor of cap-and-trade. In D.C., he’s moved well to the right.

The Ryan budget does cut taxes — primarily for the wealthiest Americans. An Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center analysis says the Ryan budget would mean $265,000 in new yearly tax cuts for people making $1 million or more — plus $129,000 they already would get from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts.

Meanwhile, the middle-class and working poor would take a beating: The Republican plan cuts billions for Medicaid and food stamps, Head Start and Pell grants, job training and elder care.

Their pinched vision of government is, as President Obama called it, “social Darwinism.” Every man for himself, millionaires get a head start.

Make no mistake: The Ryan budget — slammed by Obama on Tuesday as “radical” and “a prescription for decline” — is designed to make the rich richer and threatens the other 99 percent with disaster. This is the Republicans’ budget. Republican leadership endorsed it. Mitt Romney is behind it. And New Jersey’s Republicans have fallen in line.